Now that the Christmas holiday is over, I think it is safe to admit that during my lifetime, I have received more flashlights as Christmas gifts than any human being that has ever lived. I know it's hard to believe just looking at me, but that's true. But I come by it honestly. You see, Jeannie's dad loved flashlights. I think during his adult life, Dad Bellis was never more than a few feet from a flashlight at any time. He often wore a small penlight flashlight on his belt. He always had a flashlight in the glove compartment of every car that he owned. He had big lanterns that were powered by the six volt batteries. He had little teeny flashlights that were powered by triple A batteries. And Dad Bellis thought that his son's-in-law ought to have just as many flashlights as he did. And so every Christmas, I could bank on some type of flashlight being under the tree with my name on it. Dad Bellis has been with the Lord some years now, but many of those flashlights are still in drawers in my home. I try to keep batteries in all of them. I ought to own stock in Doris Hill. In recent years, my grandchildren have discovered my many flashlights. They think they are toys. And when they play with these toys, they have a most endearing habit. They shine them directly into your eyes. I mean, is there anything more annoying than having an LED flashlight flashed into your eyes? You know, you tell a three-year-old, don't do that. That's not nice. And you have all the proof you need for the sin nature. Now, as irritating as it is to have an LED flashlight shined in your eyes repeatedly, there is no comparison with a look at the noonday sun. I mean, when was the last time you walked outside at noon and you thought, you know, I just need to stare directly at the sun for a minute or two. I think that would be really pleasant. No comparison. No comparison between that bright LED flashlight and the light of the noonday sun. Those two words, will you repeat them with me? No comparison. I want you to write those words in your mind over the passage that we take up this morning. Because in this passage, the Apostle Paul is trying to communicate one simple truth, and that is that there is no comparison between spiritual gifts and agape love. No comparison. Not even between the most useful spiritual gifts. The most spectacular spiritual gifts. No comparison. Let's read five verses here. In 1 Corinthians chapter 13, beginning in verse 8. 1 Corinthians 13, beginning in verse 8. Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail. Whether there are tongues, they will cease. Whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I understood as a child. I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face, now I know in part, but then I shall know just as also I am known. Now abide, faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is agape, is love. This morning, our focus will be on just verses 8 through 10. And in these verses, Paul teaches that there is no comparison. Spiritual gifts are temporary, but love is permanent. Spiritual gifts are temporary, but love is permanent. Now, verse 8 begins with that simple three-word sentence, love never fails. Now, give credit to the translators of the old King James Version. That is a poetic conclusion to verse 7. I mean, it just flows, doesn't it? Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. It just sounds so right. It continues that poetic quality of verses 4 through 7. But the problem is that the word that is translated fails here at the beginning of verse 8 is an unusual word. And it's actually much more picturesque than simply the translation fails. Like many of the verbs in the verses before this, this verb paints a picture. And the verb actually means falls to the ground. In front of our home, we have a huge stand of maiden grass. How many of you know what maiden grass is? Most people don't know what maiden grass is. How many of you know what pompous grass is? OK, maiden grass is kind of a smaller form of pompous grass. So we have a huge stand of it in front of our home. And I like it in the summertime. In the summertime, it gets heads on it and they wave in the wind and it's a beautiful plant. But come fall, it dies off. And if that's all it did, it would be okay. But in December, the fronds of grass that have died off begin to blow away. And so they blow all across our yard. And my wife has been after me for some weeks now to cut it down because of that. And I actually did that yesterday. That's why it's on my mind. That is a picture of what this word means. It's a picture of a plant dying and the leaves falling to the ground. Now, for some of you, you may feel that I have now forever ruined the poetry of 1 Corinthians 13, because the word doesn't actually mean fail. But you need to understand that God doesn't promise that love always succeeds. That's not what this word is about. I have this dread, you know, in the In the marriage ceremony that I use, I quote these verses. And I have this dread that the married couples that I marry are going to think that somehow the success of their marriage is guaranteed because love never fails. And they love each other. And so, of course, everything will be successful. But that's not what that phrase means. Rather, the idea here that Paul is pointing out is that love is permanent. It will never fall like a dead leaf from a plant to the ground and decay and disintegrate and be no more. Love is permanent. Love is eternal. How do you know love is eternal? Love is eternal because God is Love. The eternal God is agape. That's what the Apostle John teaches us in 1 John chapter 4. And so we know that love is permanent. We know that love is eternal. In fact, not only is the eternal God love, but that is the nature that God puts into us as His children, in His likeness. And so in eternity, I expect that agape love will be even more predominant when our old sin natures have finally been taken away and we are actually all like Jesus Christ. So the point that Paul is actually making is that love is permanent, love is eternal. And by the way, that's a very practical truth in the here and now. We invest in the eternal. We lay up treasures in heaven when we seek to cultivate agape in our lives and in our characters. So much, so much that we invest in during our lives will pass away. It will be destroyed in the final conflagration. But not love, not agape. The agape that we build into our lives now is eternal. It will live in us forever. Now, in these three verses, Paul contrasts the permanence of love, the permanence of agape, with three particular spiritual gifts. Prophecy, tongues, and knowledge. Now, as I've shared with you, as we've studied through 1 Corinthians to this point, the Corinthian Christians were particularly invested in the most spectacular spiritual gifts, like tongues. They also set great store by knowledge, both on the Bible knowledge that they had, because Paul and Peter and Apollos had taught in their church, but also because of their background in some of the pagan cults. They liked the idea that they had access to secret knowledge, to mysteries, via the gift of knowledge, the spiritual gift of knowledge. And then Paul adds a third prophecy to this list because he is about to contrast the usefulness of prophecy with the usefulness of tongues in chapter 14. So he's kind of giving us a little bit of a preliminary introduction to that idea here. But even as useful as prophecy was at this point in the development of the church, it's still one of the spiritual gifts that is temporary. Whether there are prophecies, they will fail. Whether there are tongues, they will cease. Whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. Spiritual gifts will fail. Love never fails, but spiritual gifts will fail. No comparison. Now, let me give you a little warning here. I'm going to take a little time out. As you can see, if you're looking at your outline, I'm going to dive down now into quite a bit of detail. So you really need to stick with me, or I'm going to lose you and you're going to be... These verses are important, not just to our understanding of agape, but also to our understanding of tongues. Why do we here at Midway Bible Church not practice tongues? Why is there not tongue speaking in our services? And we're going to get more into this when we get into 1 Corinthians 14. But these verses give us the rock solid answer to that question. So you really, the problem is they're found down in the details of the words here. So you've got to stick with me. OK? All right. Paul, first of all, speaks of prophecies. Remember in chapter 12 that Paul ranks prophecy as one of the foremost gifts behind only the gift of apostleship. But when you contrast it with agape love, it will fail. But you need to understand something. The verb that is translated prophecies they will fail is a different verb than the verb that says love will never fail. Different word. And if I could get angry translators that I don't know, I would. The fact that they will take two different words in the original language to different words in the original language and translate them both by the same English word in the same verse, there ought to be a law. You can't do that. So the word here, prophecies, but prophecies, they will fail. This is the key word in this passage. And we need to take time to unpack it. It's not just a suitcase that we need to unpack. This is a tractor-trailer we need to unpack. So stick with me while we unpack it. So the verb that's translated fail, prophecies, but prophecies, they will fail. This verb means to make inoperative or useless. To make inoperative or useless. When I was a boy, we lived next door to a National Guard armory. And it was an interesting experience. One or two days a year, there would be scads of men who would come to that armory for just a few hours. And then they would all go off to camp somewhere where they trained. And the rest of the time, only two or three men worked in that armory. And most of the armory was a really nice gymnasium. So naturally, I thought it was a good idea to befriend these guys so that I could use the gymnasium when I wanted to. And they were friendly men. And one in particular, a staff sergeant named Max, I would go in from time to time and just talk with Max. And Max gave me a number of military patches. I still have them somewhere in a box somewhere. I still have them. But the thing that I really treasured that Max gave me was a hand grenade. Now, some of you are saying, How could a man who was a staff sergeant give a 10-year-old boy a hand grenade? Well, Max could give me that hand grenade because it had been made inoperative. The explosive guts had been removed from it. In fact, they kept these around because they practiced with these grenades. They practiced throwing these grenades, the men who were training. And so that's why they had them. And so I had a grenade, still have a grenade somewhere. I'm not real sure where it is right now. I have a grenade somewhere, but it is inoperative. It's been made inoperative. That's the idea in this word. prophecies will be made inoperative. But you notice also that the tense of the verb is future. That means that prophecies have not been made inoperative at the point when Paul lived. That would happen at some future moment, and we'll talk exactly about when that moment is later on. The verb also is in the passive voice. Future tense, passive voice. Prophecies will not become inoperative of themselves. They will be made inoperative by someone or something acting upon them to make them inoperative. And of course, that will happen in the future. One more important thing regarding this key word. It is key word because the same word is used of knowledge at the end of verse 8. So stick with me. This is used of prophecy. The gift of prophecy will be made inoperative. but also the gift of knowledge will be made inoperative. It says whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. Unfortunately, again, they have missed it in the translation. It's the same verb. It ought to be translated, whether there be knowledge, it shall be made inoperative. But I'm not finished yet. This same verb is used a third time at the end of verse 10. And in our New King James Version, it's translated in a third different way. Can I say it again? Gur. That which is in part will be done away. It will be made inoperative. What I do, I want you to look at your scriptures as I give you a literal, consistent translation of these three verses, okay? Here we go. Love never falls to the ground and disintegrates. But whether there are prophecies, they will be made inoperative. Whether there are tongues, they will cease. Whether there is knowledge, it will be made inoperative. For we have knowledge in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be made inoperative. Now, if you listened carefully as I translated those verses with the verbs translated consistently, it points up the fact that tongues is the odd man out. Verse 8 says, whether there is prophecy, it will be made inoperative. The end of verse 8 says, whether there is knowledge, it will be made inoperative. And then verse 9 says, for we know in part, speaking of the gift of knowledge, and if we prophesy in part, speaking of the fact that both knowledge and prophecy are partial, when that which is perfect is come, they, those two gifts, will be made inoperative. but it says something completely different about tongues. Why is a completely different verb used with tongues? I'm glad you asked. The verb that describes tongues in verse 8 is translated cease and it means cease. Okay? You'll notice that it's also in the future tense, but instead of passive, it is in the middle voice. Now, if you've not taken Greek, you probably don't know what middle voice is, but what that means is that unlike prophecy and knowledge, which will be made inoperative by someone else or something else, tongues will cease on their own. They will not be acted on by an external agent or an external force. They will stop on their own. Something from within them will cause them to cease. Think of a battery. A battery ceases on its own, normally two or three days after Christmas. That's the idea. Whether there is prophecy, that will be made inoperative in the future by some external force. Whether there is knowledge, that will be made inoperative at some time in the future by some external force. But tongues will cease on its own of itself. So that will happen sometime after the Apostle Paul ministered. The question is, when? When did tongues cease of themselves on their own? I think that we can find the answer to that. Let me emphasize two points, okay? From 200 AD until the modern era of Pentecostalism, that's essentially 1,700 years, the practice of tongues, the evidence of any practice of tongues among the Bible-believing people of God was not to be found. The few mentions of tongues down through the centuries were among heretical groups. The following Clement of Rome was one of the earliest church leaders after the apostles. He wrote a letter to the Corinthian church in the year 95. Only about four decades after Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. And in discussing the problems in that church, and by the way, there were still all kinds of problems in Corinth 40 years later. In discussing the problems in that church, Clement did not mention tongues at all. And remember, Corinth is the only church in the New Testament that we know of that practiced tongues. The only church. And after just 40 years, Forty years after Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, it was no longer worth mentioning. Apparently, the use and the misuse of that gift had ceased by then. Justin Martyr was a great leader of the church in the 2nd century. And don't let that throw you. The 2nd century is the 100s AD, okay? He visited many of the churches of his day and he wrote extensively, yet he never mentions tongues. Not even among several lists of spiritual gifts that are found in his writings. Origen was a brilliant church scholar who lived in the third century, in the 200s AD. He explicitly argues in his writings that the sign gifts of the apostolic age were temporary and that they were not exercised by Christians in his day. And then finally, John Chrysostom. John the Golden Tongue, he was perhaps the greatest of the post-New Testament writers. He lived from 347 A.D. to 407 A.D. and writing on 1 Corinthians, he states that tongues and the other miraculous gifts had ceased. The testimony of church history says that tongues ceased on their own. no later than 200 AD, I believe by the end of the Apostolic Age. And add to the witness of church history a chronological analysis of the New Testament. Now, chronological analysis of the New Testament is difficult for most of us because the New Testament, as we find it in our Bibles, the books are not there chronologically. We don't group them chronologically. They're grouped topically. You have the Gospels, then you have Acts, which is history, then you have the letters, the epistles, and then finally you have Revelation, which is prophecy. That's the way the New Testament is laid out in our Bibles. The books are not chronological in any way. Most of us would never know that the book of 1 Thessalonians was written before the book of 1 Corinthians. You have to really study to know that. But if you look at how the mention of tongues occurs in the New Testament chronologically, what you discover is that it was mentioned in the books that were written much earlier in the New Testament era. By the way, tongues was only mentioned in three of the 27 New Testament books. It was only practiced according to what we know in scripture in only one church, the church at Corinth. You wouldn't know that from how people today look at this issue. Think about the book of Acts. How many chapters are in the book of Acts? 28. But you will not find any mention of tongues after chapter 19. Why? Because as the apostolic ages, the church age went on, This became a non-issue. Tongues ceased of itself. The battery died. So, I've taken you on a tour that has a lot to do with tongues and has a lot to do with Pentecostalism and has a lot to do with the charismatic movement. Let's come back to the point of this passage. Spiritual gifts are temporary, but agape is permanent. It is eternal. No comparison between them. But as we've already seen, Paul's argument segues into a second comparison. Not only are spiritual gifts temporary, they are also partial. No comparison. Spiritual gifts are partial, but the perfect, and that word perfect here can mean complete, but the complete is coming. Spiritual gifts are partial, but the perfect is coming. So verse 9 says, we know in part and we prophesy in part. Now both of those phrases, we know in part, we prophesy in part, both of those are pointing to spiritual gifts, to the two spiritual gifts that Paul brings up in verse 8, the gift of prophecy and the gift of knowledge. And both of those gifts are connected with the revelation of God. with God revealing Himself to the early church. The gift of prophecy, I don't want to dive down into too much detail. We're going to get into this when we get into chapter 14. The gift of prophecy in the New Testament is the same as the gift of prophecy in the Old Testament. It was the gift of being a mouthpiece for God. The Old Testament prophets said, Thus saith the Lord. The New Testament prophets did exactly the same thing. They had the revelation of God so that they could say, thus saith the Lord. The gift of knowledge, it's not as clear from the New Testament what this is, but we believe that it was also a speaking gift, just like prophecy was a speaking gift. We believe that because back in chapter 12, if you'll remember, it's called the word of knowledge. And so whatever this gift was, in some way it was a supernatural ability to know what God's mind was on certain things and to be able to share that with the church. Now, I believe that some of what was revealed through the gift of prophecy to the early church, of what was revealed through the gift of knowledge to the early church, ended up in the New Testament. And it has come down to us today in the form of the New Testament. Now the point that Paul makes about these gifts of revelation, and by the way, is the gift of prophecy and the gift of knowledge are the only gifts of revelation among the spiritual gifts. Neither one of them are actually the major one. The major one would be the gift of apostleship. It was through the apostles that most of the revelation was given to us. And so the point that's being made here is that these gifts, what was revealed through these gifts is only partial. For we know in part, we prophesy in part, The revelation and knowledge of God that we have via the gifts of apostleship and prophecy and knowledge in the New Testament is partial. And it's partial in a sense that may not be immediately apparent. The phrase, we know in part. Again, stick with me. I have to dive down into detail here. The phrase that's translated, we know in part, that's a very literal translation, but it doesn't get all of it here. The most literal translation would be that we know from part. And the phrase actually has two meanings. So first of all, it has the meaning that we don't know everything there is to know about God. We only know part of what there is to know about God. But then the phrase also has a second nuance and that is that what we do know about God, we know part by part. We know a part over here and we know a part over there. So the knowledge that God has given to us through apostleship and through the gift of prophecy and through the gift of knowledge is partial in those two ways. So first of all, We know only part of what there is to know about God. Now, this shouldn't be a surprise to any of us, because this is made clear in Scripture. In the Old Testament, this truth is stated most clearly in Deuteronomy 29.29. If you're in the school of religion, if you were a theology student, this is one of your favorite verses. It says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us. So God has revealed, and what He has revealed belongs to us, but there are still all kinds of secret things that don't belong to us. The New Testament makes a similar statement in Romans chapter 11. Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out. Think of it like this. God is infinite. You and I are not. It's not possible for a finite human being, it's not possible that our minds should be able to comprehend the fullness of God. When I think about trying to comprehend God, the word that always comes to my mind is the word puny. Our minds are too puny to be able to take in the full knowledge of God. So we know in part in the way that a child on a beach digs a hole in the sand and then takes the bucket and gets some water out of the ocean and tries to fill that hole with The ocean. And the child can do that all day long and won't put a dent in the ocean. And my friends, we can use the puny little plastic bucket of our minds for the rest of our lives, but we will never come close to filling it with the infinity of our God. We only know part of what there is to know about God. But then these words, we know in part, they have a second meaning. They mean we know part by part. We know a part over here and a part over there. And oftentimes those parts are competing truths. And we need to constantly be balancing. I mean, we experience this all the time in the Second Service, don't we? We take up an issue. We take up a question. from Scripture, and someone will make a comment, they'll talk about this verse, and we say, well, yeah, that sounds really good, and that sounds like the solution to the question. And then somebody else will say, yeah, but what about this verse over here, and what about that? And we say, well, you know, both of those are true. And sometimes it's difficult to understand how both of them can be true. And somehow we have to balance the two of them. And a lot of our knowledge of Scripture is that way. We know part by part. So we don't know just in part. We know in parts. Can I repeat that? We don't know just in part. We know in parts. Now this truth that we know in part, and we know in parts, that truth demands the balance between certainty and humility. And this is important, okay, because people go off both sides of this issue. There needs to be a balance between certainty and humility. Now look, there are certain truths in Scripture where we ought to be able to say, based on Scripture, thus saith the Lord. I am absolutely certain about this. I have the truth of God. God is all-wise. God is all-powerful. Jesus is God the Son. Jesus is 100% human. Jesus is 100% God. I don't have any problem with saying those things and saying, I will take my stand to the death for those truths. We ought to have that kind of certainty. On the other hand, we need a huge dose of humility because we don't know what we don't know. Can I repeat that? We don't know what we don't know about God. And let me tell you a little story to illustrate what I mean, because I think sometimes we do not really understand this truth. So here's a businessman from Korea named Mr. Kim. And Mr. Kim has never been to the USA before. And he flies into Denver on a business trip. And as the plane flies in, he's sitting in the middle section. This is one of those big jumbo jets that has a middle section. So as he's flying in, he doesn't see anything. And just before the plane lands, Mr. Kim has a heart attack. And so he's out cold and they have to rush him in an ambulance to the hospital and treat his heart attack. And as Mr. Kim recovers, he can look out of his hospital window and he can see the plane on which Denver sits and the rolling hills, but he cannot see anything of the Rocky Mountains. And after he's been there a few days, his wife calls him from Korea, and they talk about Denver. And he tells her what Colorado looks like from his window, from his bed. And he's very certain about what he says, because he has seen it with his own eyes. Colorado is relatively flat, with maybe a few rolling hills. And listen, is Mr. Kim correct? Yes, as far as it goes. He does not know what he does not know. One day Mr. Kim recovers enough that he can leave his hospital room and a nurse walks him down the hall to an observation deck and from there he gets his first view of the Rocky Mountains. And then he realizes that he gave his wife the completely wrong impression. While part of Colorado is somewhat flat and rolling, another part is the biggest mountain range in North America. So again, I say, we can be absolutely certain of truths that God has revealed to us in his word, and we should not shy away from the stance That we have objective truth about God and many other realities. But we also must be humble enough to realize that in some cases we may have the wrong impression because our knowledge is partial and we don't know what we don't know about God. For some of you, if you really listen to what I just said, you may be a little taken aback right now. It's an interesting balance, isn't it? That balance between certainty and humility. Notice I didn't say between certainty and confusion. Certainty and humility. Now, there is an event, yet future, that is going to remedy how partial our knowledge of God is. It's mentioned here in the last phrase of verse 10, we know in part, until that which is perfect has come. Now the key word is obviously perfect. And you probably have heard that the word perfect in the New Testament doesn't mean perfect. It doesn't mean perfect in the sense of without flaw or without sin. Rather, the word that's translated perfect here is a word that comes from the root word goal. So perfect in this verse means something that has reached its goal. So an acorn, when it reaches its goal, is what? It's an oak tree. perfect student in this sense? What's a perfect college student in this sense? When has a college student reached their goal? When they graduate. This word is used in the New Testament of Christians. It's used of us. When do we reach our goal? Well, the sense in which it's used in the New Testament is we reach our goal when we become spiritually mature. when we become an oak tree, as it were. But here in this verse, that which is perfect is not talking about people, it's not talking about Christians, it's talking about a future event that will make spiritual gifts like prophecy and knowledge inoperative. And it seems that this phrase is talking about the plan of God reaching its goal in some sense. When will the plan of God reach its goal so that spiritual gifts are no longer necessary? But the word perfect here used in this passage is also used in a second sense. In this passage, there's an obvious contrast to that which is partial. And so the phrase, that which is perfect, refers to that which is the opposite of partial, that which is complete. Paul is referring to an event which will make our knowledge of God complete. Now when will this future event take place? How many of you would like to know when that which is perfect is going to come? How many of you would like to know that? When do you think this event will take place? Well, if you would really like to know, come back next Sunday and we'll talk about it. This morning, let me end where I began. There is no comparison. That is the point of all this. Paul has given us a great deal of theological detail, but the big idea The thing that he is emphasizing is that there is no comparison between spiritual gifts, even spiritual gifts used as they ought to be used, there's no comparison between spiritual gifts and agape love. And today we have so many denominations, so many organizations on the scene that are hepped on spiritual gifts. That is a huge mistake. If I could paraphrase everything Paul is saying here in this passage in one simple sentence, it would be this. If you want to major on the majors, look to agape love. If you want to major on the majors, make sure you're loving with Christ-like love. If you want to major on the majors, make sure you're loving with God-like love. Now, I'm hitting the same point. I've been hitting this same point for weeks, right? I hope that your prayer has become in these last few weeks, Lord, would you fill me with agape love? Would you change me? Would you sanctify me? Would you make me like Christ? This is what it's all about.